From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:22:36 GMT
Subject: Re: allowing aliases to override builtins to support default options
Message-ID: <7vhc26qls3.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <76718490903061430s2fbea2dfibe06282fd22b1588@mail.gmail.com>

Jay Soffian <jaysoffian@gmail.com> writes:

> Currently git does not allow aliases to override builtins. I
> understand the reasoning behind this, but I wonder if it's overly
> conservative.

It is not.

> Most shells support overriding commands with aliases, and I'm not sure
> why git needs to be more conservative than the shell.

Because sane shells do not expand aliases when used in a script, and gives
a handy way to defeat the alias even from the command line.

    $ alias ls='ls -aF'
    $ echo ls >script
    $ chmod +x script

and compare:

    $ ./script
    $ ls
    $ /bin/ls